Category: Latte

I stopped in at the local used-book store with a box of books that were no longer needed. They chose a handful of books and offered me, in my opinion, a paltry sum but it was enough credit to get Eats, Shoots & Leaves. This book is packed with exceptional information and direction for not writing like an idiot. Let’s see if anything I read sticks in my brain, shall we?

At 204 pages, this is another great book to pair with a cup or three of tea. As is my nature, I grabbed the first tin of tea from the shelf which just happened to be a Pumpkin Spice. The bad thing about this tea is that it requires a splash of milk to offset the bitter, spiciness of the chai. And just my luck, I ran out of the milk the day before! The great thing about this tea is the spiciness of the chai which compliments Truss’s (punctuated appropriately according to the book) snappy attitude.

Commas, if you don’t whistle at them to calm down, are unstoppably enthusiastic on the job.

This is a tea that, without milk, must be sipped slowly. The chai has an over-powering spicy flavour to it, and what I mean by spicy isn’t hot-spicy like Indian curries, but spicy like Truss’s writing – snappy, witty, flamboyant without being over-the-top. She knows how to quicken the heart rate with examples of poorly punctuation phrases, and she knows how to sustain that heart rate with appropriate punctuation mixed in with saucy language. (Did you know that an exclamation mark/point is known as a Dog’s Cock?)

Her book should be required reading for anyone looking to do any modicum of writing, whether personal or professional. You can choose to drink a spicier tea like the Pumpkin Spice Chai, or maybe temper the writing style with something mellower like the Ginger Pear white tea I switched to for the later half of the book. This tea from David’s, has a spiciness to it because of the ginger, but it’s almost like an after-thought on the palate. Similar in ways to the shortest chapter, A Little Used Punctuation Mark, Truss clearly states that this chapter on the hyphen was an after-thought. The after-thought of the lingering ginger taste was perfect for the last few chapters, as I could finally focus on the writing without thinking about what my taste buds were experiencing.